Grip
by CitrusLove
Summary: Beyond and Light. AU, one-shot.


Beyond shoots the bullet.

His hand is steady, the wrist slick with sweat, eyes heavy and breathe drawn out in heavy, ragged gasps. The skin under his eyes is a painful red, stretched with wear and purplish from an overly sleepless lifestyle.

The ground is dusty, the gritty landscape outside cold, the sky stitching an intricate web of black and grey, and Beyond's chest heaves as the barrel fidgets, the cool metal grooves of the magnum shining as a beacon in the darkness that knows no intensity, no heartbreak, nothing but its own permanent existence.

"Nnngg.. ngggahhgha.. nng..ha.. hahaha..hahah..." The pale knuckle squeezes, and the bile deep within Beyond's saccharine throat builds up like a wave. His inner-masochist is screaming, but he doesn't falter. Nothing is visible but Light Yagami's throat, awash with shadows that betray his fear shimmering in amber eyes, only metres away.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Get him in here! Get him in here NOW! Don't you dare tell Public Safety, just get Kyle in here! Call in forensics! And get the FUCKING janitor!"

The whole building is in an uproar as surgeons drag in the body to the main operating-theatre. Detergent sponges wipe down the table as a groaning near-corpse is brought into the view of Kyle, who is currently plugging in the cords leading to the bio-scanner. His fingers dance quickly across the holographic-keyboard, as he turns on the machine that would eventually penetrate through the patient's psychological walls and pinpoint any neurological problems which could be located within the psyche.

It is a long process--the nurses rushing to the scorching burns scattered on the seemingly perfect body. An oxygen mask is quickly shifted onto the golden head, tubes invading the scarred throat as the body is hooked up to multiple IV drips. The mess had to be ignored; over 60% blood loss, mostly on the head surgeon, who meticulously attends to the moderately functioning heart.

The right ventricle chamber convulses and contracts like something out of the sfx department, the thick flesh pumping slowly and soundly, every now and again shuddering inside the walls of the man's chest. The damage was elaborate, but that was to be expected. No one generally survives the onslaught of forty **anti-bodies**. The surgeon's icy eyes do a once-over of the man's pulmonary and systemic circuit before closing the job. The broken muscle fibres would heal, and the scars would fade.

The biggest issue would be the psychological trauma. The head surgeon nodded to Kyle, who sent for files of the patient's identity, and all and any classified information on his person. If he lived, this soldier, this hero, then maybe they had a chance. A chance to learn and prepare and finally, finally, wipe this beastly species out.

* * *

The corridors were always silent between 4 and 6am, which had the least amount of medical procedures going on.

Kyle used his time wisely: he slept in the lounge next to the cafeteria, on the always vacant seat with no cushions. He would lazily shift the gossip magazines in a near-tidy bunch and collapse before the receptionist could say otherwise. It had become a usual thing, and when his watch ecstatically beeped 6.45(usually far too close to the shell of his overly-sensitive ear) Kyle would make his way to the senior's office for the 'lowdown.'

Seriously.

This truly was, in every sense, the perfect case. The head surgeon, formally known as Dr. Eargraham, informally known as Ice, handed Kyle something close to the key to heaven. His reputation as a medical-nazi seemed to change into something akin to Jesus as Kyle scanned his files' contents. He was great with electronics and diagnosing patients, but this was something else: psychiatry.

He only had to ask questions and listen contentedly for a few hours each day, and his pay suddenly doubled, no, _tripled_. Kyle made a mental-reminder to thank the patient for surviving the **anti-body** outbreak someday, and maybe ask him out to dinner with his three, maybe four luscious wives he'd be assisting.

Kyle stepped out of the office, ignoring the looks of bitter jealousy shooting his way as he glided down the hall to salvation, in the form of a 23-year old male hooked up to numerous tubes and being flushed with so many antibiotic combinations that sooner or later he'd become a human-pharmacy.

Kyle pauses outside the patient's ward; he's never dealt with anything this extreme before, and he mentally prepares himself with a familiar mantra he'd often used before going on a blind date. Unfortunately, this 'date,' would not exactly be very talkative, not to mention the blatant fact that this was a _man._

At least, Kyle thinks, he doesn't have to pick up the check.

* * *

This hospital has been decorated in all sorts of new machinery in recent times, and happily runs on renewable electricity, brought by ominous-looking trucks. The ends of these trucks entail a massive hexagon-shaped cylinder facing inwards, which connects to the back entrance of the hospital, flooding it with electricity needed for the week. This new kind of electricity is stored in bases, thick with security-cameras and sound-proof material that obviously is not going to be conducting any danger.

'Renewable' is a trick word here: renewable until it runs past its expiry date. After the truck has unloaded its volts, it travels back into the vast net of the city, an underground mass of apartment and office complexes overshadowed by the very large population of political-vigilantes and necks of crime syndicates, twisting in and out of every school-yard, every block of retired-folk.

The hospital of this metropolitan city, multi-ethnicities turning out from the lost country called the United States, is no exception to the tides of hysterical survival that brings forth crime. Evidence of human error treated day in, day out, at this prestigious establishment. A lavished entrance-way, pot-plants galore, a sweeping walkway to the rooms that blur the lines that define life and death.

And, nestled between the sheets, is a man that's going to wake up to the world he'd finally thought he'd achieved, a world he'd risked everything for, completely and utterly undone.

_

* * *

_

_Light's eyes flick up to the glorious traffic-red canvases of Beyond's eyes, pits of volcanic-wrath that never seem to blink, forever on the brink of eruption._

_Light notices the small things: from Beyond's previous prolonged fits of stretched insanity, comes a shrewd confidence—its in the way he smiles, as he tilts the barrel of the gun a little below Light's slight Adam's apple, the fresh gleam that brightens the whites of his eyes with childish excitement. _

_The echo of the wind whistles shrill and high-pitched through the crack in the door, an eerie sound that does nothing to calm Light's already jumpy nerves. His stomach twists like spaghetti as Beyond's silhouette suddenly blends into the shadowy void that his eyesight can't reach. _

_Just knowing, that he's lost another way sense of survival, that he can't __**see**__, sends involuntary chills sliding down his perfectly straight spine, his well-kept hair uncharacteristically melding to the sides of his sweaty face, cold and alone with a murderer.- _

* * *


End file.
